More celebrities than ever before are entering politics – we asked them why
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Smiling out from signed photographs on the wall Sarah Jessica Parker, Bradley Cooper and Kevin Costner are just a few of the celebrities adorning Giovanni’s, a family-run Italian in Covent Garden, London.
As owner Pino supplies a generous sprinkling of parmesan on my bucatini, he fizzes with pride over his illustrious customers and he’s as liberal with name-dropping as he is with the cheese. It’s an unremarkable Wednesday in June and Bridesmaids director Paul Feig is having lunch at the table opposite. In a frame next to him there’s a snap of former Health Secretary and Conservative MP Matt Hancock. Pino then pulls out his phone and shows me another: the restaurateur with erstwhile Prime Minister Liz Truss – “she asked to take the photo,” he beams, “usually, it’s the opposite.”
If I were a politician seeking a spot for an under-the-radar lunch meeting, this is the last place I’d come. Plus, there are plenty of places to take those meetings within the hushed walls of Westminster, just 18 minutes away. But I suspect that’s exactly the point. They want to be seen and they want to be aligned with the A-Listers Pino makes space for. You see, in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to know where politics ends, and celebrity begins. As society becomes progressively geared towards fame – likes, comments, shares, fandom – is there a benefit to politics becoming more about likeability and personality? Or should we be concerned that the core of our democracy is becoming a chew toy in the PR-game of those desperately seeking recognition and power at any cost? I immersed myself in the game to find out…
“The country runs better with a good-looking man in the White House,” Sex and the City’s Samantha once said. She was referring to the actor Ronald Reagan who worked his way up from Warner Brothers to The White House, defeating Democrat Jimmy Carter by a landslide and going on to serve two terms as President. The relationship between celebrity, charisma and politics has long been symbiotic. It goes like this: politicians need votes, voters need names to tick, celebrities are famous and name recognition is vital in the fight.
Since — and even before — Reagan, Hollywood has offered up its fair share of stars to the world of politics with mixed results, among them: Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cynthia Nixon, Caitlyn Jenner and even Kanye West. We’ve seen a property mogul and reality TV star become the leader of the free world (Donald Trump) a comedian who once played the piano with his ‘penis’ lead an impassioned resistance against Russian invasion (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) and seemingly countless UK politicians clamouring to debase themselves on primetime TV (nibbling on animal genitalia: optional).
A 2021 survey from Pipslay, found that 63% of Americans said they believed celebrities made good politicians, with 58% saying they would support Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Matthew McConaughey if either actor decided to run for president. Another poll, conducted in 2020, found that among the Gen Z respondents, Zendaya and Beyoncé were considered to have the most trusted opinions. The big names, it seems, have the potential to pull in the votes despite having no political experience whatsoever.
One celeb gunning to become our next political super star is a little unexpected. TV presenter and former Hear’Say popstar Myleene Klass has been passionately campaigning for improved miscarriage care in recent years, and it has given her a taste for government. We catch up over Zoom.
“I’ve had letters from counsellors from every single party trying to get me to come on board,” she tells me from her kitchen table. “But they see me as a feather in their cap as opposed to someone that can genuinely affect change.” Klass won’t share which party she would stand for – she’s reticent to align with anyone. “The problem with politics,” she says, “is that the celebrities have become the politicians and the politicians have become the entertainment.” But being approached has planted a seed. “I thought, don’t be so ridiculous, then actually you start thinking well, is that the way to affect change? […] you can talk about all the injustice you can, but ultimately, the source of where things can be changed is Westminster. So that was where I started. And that is absolutely where I'm going to finish.”
Klass doesn’t mince her words — “I don’t think that half the people in parliament are fit for purpose” — and she’s keenly aware of how her own following might get policies around the issues she’s concerned about (women’s health, online safety, children’s education) across the line. A feeling that will have since been heightened — after we speak, Klass’ campaigning alongside Labour MP Olivia Blake and baby loss charity Tommy’s pays off, with women now receiving medical support after their first miscarriage rather than their third, as it was previously.
Political journalist Sophie (not her real name) explains that Klass’ experience of being approached by politicians is becoming more common. “In some circumstances a personality or a name helps you because it means that you can become something that isn’t of the party.” She tells me that ahead of London’s upcoming mayoral elections, some Conservative party supporters briefly toyed with the idea of putting up a celebrity candidate in the Labour stronghold.
“Holly Valance’s husband [and billionaire Tory donor] Nick Candy had been speaking to wealthy people, Tory types and politicians trying to work out who would have the best chance of winning for the Tories,” she tells me. “They wanted a celeb, or at least somebody with enough name recognition that they could go on the ballot paper to oppose Sadiq Khan and people would go ‘oh I know who that is.’” Sophie says several names were thrown around – including television’s Judge Rinder. Another political insider tells me The Apprentice’s Karen Brady was also floated. [When contacted by Cosmopolitan UK, representatives for Rinder said that there was “no truth in this at all”. Representatives for Candy and Brady did not respond.]
Sophie explains, “[In London], putting up a strong Tory is not going to help you. But putting someone on your ballot who is not associated with the Tory party might sound completely mad but can work. That’s where personality becomes more important than your party. It's what happened with Boris,” she says, referring to when Johnson was the capital’s Mayor. “Boris was bigger than the Tory party, that was what got him over the line in London. I've seen him ruffle his hair before he walks [into public]. It’s all affected to make him look less rich, less posh.”
The superficial reasons celebrities might succeed at the polling station are numerous: they are media trained, good communicators, are usually attractive and have wide networks of influence and access to funds required to run big impactful campaigns. But beyond aesthetics, what about them appeals to voters that would lead us to entrust a film star to run the country more than, say, someone who has been gaining vital, applicable experience for years?
Academics have credited the cult of celebrity in government with the rise of populism, where politicians attempt to ingratiate themselves with the electorate by claiming to be one of us, as opposed to a member of the political elite (an attractive prospect, when you consider 61% of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet is privately educated). Essentially: we’re fed up with the cronyism and privileges of the old guard. An IPPR think tank report from 2021 warned that trust in politics was rapidly declining, with 63% of Britons describing politicians as “merely out for themselves”.
Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor of Government at the University of Essex pinpoints the 2008 financial crash as the moment the electorate started to turn away from experts and careerist politicians. “There were huge economic disparities afterwards - the banks were basically saved, and the average person was not. A feeling developed that people needed someone who cared about them,” she says.
It's exactly this mood that enabled Trump to enter the White House with zero political background and led to the populist Nigel Farage MP garnering enormous support for his Brexit campaigning in the UK. Their respective ‘outsider’ status, casual pint swigging, straight-talking demeanours and promises to reflect the desires of the people, proved irresistible to disenfranchised voters.
After all, can we really blame voters for losing faith in our elected officials, when they lie about illegal wars, party during lockdown and fiddle their expenses? Recent years have seen politicians behaving far below the standards that we might expect from people in positions of power and so while it might seem absurd to elect someone with no background in diplomacy, the logic follows… can they really be much worse than what we’ve ended up with? Having said that, most celebrities share the same charmed, nepotistic upbringings as many of the Etonian political old guard so, what makes them different in the eyes of the electorate?
When it comes to celebrities, explains Professor Lindstaedt, though they aren’t necessarily populist, their outsider status means they are seen as a break from traditional politics and appeal to voters who feel disillusioned with the current political picture at a time of growing scepticism towards careerist politicians. “It's fascinating that you'll now see [prospective candidates] bragging about having zero expertise. And that is attractive to voters, as it means they can relate,” she says. And with a recent poll of the Cosmopolitan UK readers showing that as many as 91% of you barely relate to politicians, it figures.
Sharon Coen, Senior Lecturer in Media Psychology at the University of Salford explains that it all comes down to the power of parasocial relationships. She says that repeated exposure to people can lead us to identify with them to the point where we feel we really know them. “Parasocial relationships give the perception of familiarity and, when positive, this can engender a sense of intimacy and trust.” As for why they aren’t considered members of the elite which, by many measures, they undoubtedly are - this is because we think of celebrities as primus inter pares, meaning ‘first among equals’. “The celebrity is often perceived as ‘one of us who made it’,” she says, so while this may not be true, they retain the association of being ‘of the people’.
There is also another psychological dynamic at play, explains David James Jackson, associate professor of political science at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He refers to the marketing concept of Meaning Transfer Theory. “Celebrities bring a series of positive meanings that people like, and then these are transferred to the product they are endorsing. Then, when an individual buys that product, they transfer that meaning to themselves.” So, when we drink a coffee sold to us by George Clooney, we are, in a sense, imagining ourselves imbibing that Clooney star quality.
If we apply this to politics, the product becomes the party or the political issue at hand. To test the theory, Jackson conducted an experiment. He presented participants in one group with a series of unattributed political statements and looked at their rate of agreement with the statement. Another group was presented with the same statements, this time celebrity backed. With the celebrity name attached, approval of the statement increased.
I’m not like a regular politician…
Someone take his phone off him. Please. I wasn’t the only one seriously disturbed by Matt Hancock, dancing down the beach to I’m Just Ken. The second the video hit his TikTok the scream of ick could almost be heard up and down the country. By the time this article is published I’m almost certain another politician will have done something even more humiliating (is it even possible?!) in a bid to gain fame, as the blur between celebrity and politics goes the other way, too, with many MPs now placing stardom high on their agendas.
However, as I learned from my insiders, perhaps instead of sniggering at Hancock, inside Parliament, his ex-colleagues might actually be… jealous?
“If you look at the politician who has had the most praise in the last week, it isn’t one who is fighting for change, it’s one looking pretty holding a sword,” a former special advisor (SpAd) from recent administrations told me, a week after the Coronation, referencing Penny Mordaunt MP, who became a central talking point of King Charles III’s big day for bearing the sword in her role as Lord President of the Council. Mordaunt’s spin around Westminster Abbey led to an explosion of memes – her arm strength even becoming a central line of questioning in a subsequent BBC interview.
The former SpAd describes Whitehall like a schoolyard: “No one is that nice to each other and everyone wants to hang out with the popular one, but they’re terrified of them, too. In parliament, they’re jealous of Penny holding the sword.”
This swarm for social media fame is relatively new within Whitehall. Sophie explains that the cult of political personality ramped up during the Covid-19 pandemic. In lockdown, daily government press conferences became the hottest appointment TV and characters we’d never heard of ended up on T-shirts, birthday cards and mugs, including Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty – next slide please! – and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was even nicknamed ‘Dishy Rishi’ on Twitter, following the launch of the then Chancellor’s furlough scheme.
On one hand, we can’t exactly blame politicians for wanting to use this to their advantage. After all, it’s vital that the younger generation engages in politics and utilising platforms like TikTok are a way to reach new audiences. Research from April this year found that as many as 33% of us get our news from social media, 35% from TV and 47% from professional publishers. So it makes sense that developing a ‘personality’ and mastering witty one-liners has become essential in the fight for our attention.
The problem arises when politicians aren’t courting media attention for the greater good… but for their own egos. Sophie says she’s been approached by numerous MPs wanting to make a name for themselves outside of politics. “After I’ve interviewed them, some will go ‘I’m really interested in working in the media one day, are there any opportunities for me?’ In the last month alone, I had three quite senior MPs come to me and say ‘after the next election, I’ll probably lose my seat, what are the chances I could get my own column?’,” she says. “The question is, do [these MPs] see themselves as celebrities? [It all] feeds into how Westminster works, especially things like PMQs where you see an MP stand up and read a question and you know they’re doing it because they’re hoping it will get picked up on TikTok.”
Of course, fame does not guarantee likeability. Hancock’s attempt to claw back his shattered reputation following catastrophic failings during the pandemic and an ill-advised bottom grope (which we can never erase from our collective memory) by going on I’m a Celebrity did little to revive his image in the public eye. More than 1,700 people complained to Ofcom at the news he would be joining the show. Now we mostly want to know who we can complain to about his TikToks. And many of us are still trying to process George Galloway’s disastrous turn on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 during which the politician pretended to be a cat and licked cream from another contestant’s hands.
Sophie remains convinced that these sorts of politicians are in the minority. “Remember, there are 650 odd MPs and their reason for being is to champion you. For most of them it’s a pretty boring job. They work seven days a week, they’re on the doorstep in the rain, and they’re constantly chasing up the council for things. Most MPs are generally in this because they want to do some good.”
Education, education, education
With our trust for politicians at a nadir and our enthralment with celebrity seemingly knowing no end, are the two worlds destined to become so inter-linked that we fail to see the political wood for the performative trees?
When it comes to celebrity involvement in politics, Sophie isn’t too concerned. “I know some people are really snobby about it, but if you get people from different communities to come in and talk about an issue that isn’t being raised and it shines a light on it, then that’s great.”
If we don’t want the two worlds to merge even further, then education is key. Our political processes can still feel quite closed off and convoluted to most of us. “Our educational system hasn't really taught us anything about how our political systems work,” says Professor Lindstaedt. “So voters are going to take a shortcut. And the shortcut is ‘who do I like the best’?” The danger of that, she says, is that we end up with people in power who don’t necessarily know what they are doing – able to attract attention but at a loss when it comes to getting down to the nitty gritty of governing and passing legislation.
For Jackson, the real issue is the steps that are being circumvented for them to get there. “It's the going straight from celebrityhood to the presidency without the in between part that is potentially the most troubling aspect, because governing is a skill, like every other skill that's learned,” he says.
As history has shown us, relying on personality alone can be a foolish move at best, and a grave mistake at worst. Mark Wheeler, Professor of Political Communications at London Metropolitan University and author of Celebrity Politics, points to dictators like Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who won voters round with their calculated charismas. “Dictators utilised the available media to perpetuate the cult of personality and public obedience to their unquestioning rule,” he warns.
As we approach the next general election, this time with the choice of two low-key (read: fairly uninspiring) candidates, now is the time for us to scrutinise our reactions to them. Are we seduced by witty repartee in the Commons or a viral TikTok video, or are we doing our research and checking the facts? Are we prioritising policy, or personality? We need to be truly certain that the name we put that ‘X’ next to is going to deliver the best for us.
This story was first published in the October/November 2023 print edition of Cosmopolitan UK
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